Foremost Media Website Design & SEO Blog

PIPA and SOPA Threaten Harmful Regulations on Online American Businesses

2012-01-18T09:36:00.000-06:00

There are currently two bills that sit before Congress that would censor the Web and cripple sites and businesses accused of piracy, without even proving that those websites are meaningfully doing so. It threatens the free flow of information and the potential for innovation online.

What are SOPA and PIPA?

Wikipedia's "Dark Wednesday" Message

Essentially, they are new ways to give copyright holders the ability to go after companies that host pirated content. Once accused, the site would be blocked from anyone within the U.S. to access them and all search engines would be required to delete links to the accused sites. Also, it requires advertisers and payment services (such as Google Adwords, Adsense, etc.) to withdraw their business with the accused site. This would literally mean that site would no longer exist, and it's days of business would be done for good.

Online giants such as Google, Twitter and Reddit have all publicly opposed the bills by "going black" today. Wikipedia has even gone completely dark by taking down the site and replacing it with a message stating, "Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge," with more information regarding PIPA and SOPA and the reasons they oppose the legislation.

Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose the two bills, but we need everyone's help in opposing it by signing a petition created by Google.

Click here to oppose the bills and sign the petition!

Buying A Video Camera For Business Use

2012-01-12T08:46:00.005-06:00

Editors Note- For this article I've asked Chris Larsen from our sister company Foremost Outdoor Television to help me answer a question I seem to be getting more and more frequently from customers wishing to start building their own content for their website, YouTube and Facebook- "What kind of camera should I buy?"

By Chris Larsen from Foremost Outdoor TV

The Golden Era of Video is here. Thanks to computer based editing software and rapidly improving technology, the cost of producing videos in house is within reach for just about any business. The first item most aspiring video producers buy is a camera. The camera is a producer’s main tool. Without a quality camera that offers all of the options important to you, your end result will be less than satisfactory. Budget is usually the main consideration when purchasing a camera. Believe it or not, you can buy a camera that will fit the needs of most businesses without breaking the bank. Here are a few other things to consider:

Panasonic HMC 150

Audio Inputs

Most of us have a video camera for home movies. Capturing family moments on video was all you were interested in when buying that camera. Just about all consumer cameras have a built in microphone at the front of the camera. The microphone is made to capture sound in all directions around the camera, even unwanted sound. If you’ve ever shot a video outside on a windy day with a camera like this, all you hear is wind.

More expensive consumer cameras will have a microphone input called a “mini” or “stereo mini” plug. This allows the user to override the on board microphone with a higher quality external microphone. Some have an accessory shoe that allows a specialized microphone to be used without the use of wires. Those are very nice but keep in mind most of the microphones that can be used in those accessory shoes are brand specific and typically costlier than standard aftermarket microphones. A headphone plug allows you to monitor the audio while recording.

Professional cameras and many prosumer cameras have audio inputs called “XLR inputs”. XLR inputs offer the best quality sound and give the user more control over audio. Most allow on the fly adjustments for audio levels. Consumer level cameras typically control audio levels automatically. Professional cameras usually have both an automatic feature and manual controls. All prosumer and professional cameras offer a headphone terminal.

Why is this important? Let’s say you are shooting a video on the floor of a convention. An on-board microphone would capture all of the sounds on the convention floor. The background noise would be just as loud as the person giving the presentation. A lavalier microphone (commonly known as a clip-on mic) captures some background sound but focuses on the speaker. The result is audio that is clear with just a touch of ambient sound to add dimension to the audio.

Zoom

The key thing to look for with zoom is optical zoom. Many cameras boast zoom magnification of 40x or more. However, that is usually digital zoom. When you look at the fine print you’ll notice the optical zoom is usually somewhere between 12x or 20x. 12x zoom means the object you were shooting will appear 12 times closer when the camera is fully zoomed in than with the naked eye. Optical zoom uses the camera’s lens to generate magnification. Digital zoom uses the camera’s computer to produce magnification. The result of digital zoom is often a pixilated look. If you purchase a camera that has both digital and optical zoom, turn the digital zoom off for best results. Zoom isn’t a big factor in most business related videos. But if it is important for your field, compare cameras by optical zoom.

Tape, Hard Drive, or Card Based Media

Most new cameras record on card based media, usually SD cards. SD cards are fairly inexpensive and offer huge capacity in a small package. Cameras using SD cards are quieter & more energy efficient than cameras using tape. You never have to worry about the tape heads getting dirty or malfunctioning. SD cards can also be inserted directly into your computer, making the post production process more efficient.

Some consumer cameras have built in hard drives. I would not buy a camera that was hard drive only. If the hard drive is corrupted, your camera is worthless. Most current cameras with a hard drive also have SD card slots. I recommend using the SD cards primarily while accessing the hard drive as an emergency backup.

Many cameras, especially at the professional level, still use tape. Cameras with tape decks will eventually see those decks fail. But with care and maintenance, most will last several years. Tapes can’t be plugged directly into your computer like SD cards. You will need a Fire-wire or other type of input cable to capture your video digitally. That can be a disadvantage. However, tape does have one big advantage over SD cards. When it comes to archiving your footage, tapes are cheap. You can put a $3 tape on a shelf and it will still be there ten years from now. Quality SD cards with 32 GB capacity can cost from $40 to $200 depending on the speed. Most businesses can’t stack those on the wall. You will need an external hard drive to back up your video. A good external hard drive is usually pretty fail safe but if it crashes, everything stored on it crashes too. Still, the benefits of SD card media outweigh most of the drawbacks.

Standard Definition vs. High Definition

There are very few standard definition cameras on the market today but they’re still out there. High Definition cameras are now priced low enough that just about all businesses can afford them. So there really is no reason to invest in old technology. Keep in mind that not all HD is the same. Some cameras shoot in 720p which is a smaller version of high definition. Look for cameras that shoot in 1920x1080 HD. If you need to make the format smaller in post production the video will look much better than making smaller video larger in post production. Higher end cameras offer several HD settings such as 1080i, 60i, 60p and others. These alternate HD options allow the producer to change the look of the video in the camera. However, most business users won’t have a need for them.

Other Features

There are some other variables to consider. Image stabilization is important but generally hard to assess without using the camera. As a general rule, the more expensive a camera is, the better the image stabilization. But even inexpensive cameras can produce good footage if used with a tripod or monopod. When it comes to LCD screens, bigger is always better. A focus ring is another sought after feature. A focus ring allows the videographer to manually control what the camera is focused on. Some cameras offer on-camera editing and free editing software. On-camera editing is great for home movies. But for professional looking videos quality software is needed. The freebies that come with consumer cameras are an exercise in frustration in my opinion. Don’t buy a camera based on free software or on-camera editing.

The four main factors above should lead most business professionals toward buying a camera that fits their needs. Here are a few suggestions at varying price points.

Kodak PlaySport Zx5 $179.99

Kodak PlaySport

This is what is known as a point-of-view(POV) camera. If you can only afford one camera, don’t buy a POV camera. However, they can come in handy as a second camera to get an alternative viewpoint. This camera doesn’t have audio inputs but shoots in stunning 1920x1080 HD. You can use audio from your main camera during post production. Think of it is an inexpensive way to add a second camera angle to your shoots. GoPro cameras have most of the POV market place and they are very good cameras as well. However, they are designed for action sports enthusiasts and lack many of the features the PlaySport has that will appeal to business pros. GoPro cameras have no zoom compared to the PlaySport’s 4x zoom. The big difference is the PlaySport has a 2” LCD screen. The GoPro does not have a built in LCD screen. If you have a use for underwater video, the PlaySport is waterproof in up to 10 feet of water.

Canon VIXIA HF M400 $549.99

Cannon VIXIA HF M400

The HF M400 is a superb camera for the serious business pro that is just getting started in video production. It offers audio inputs, a headphone terminal, and manual audio controls. The M400 has a 10x optical zoom, has two SD card drives, and shoots in 1920x1080i. There are two separate image stabilizers that work together to produce rock solid video. The M400 does not have a manual focus ring but you won’t find one on any camera at this price point. This camera also does well in low light situations. If you do want to invest in an on-camera light, the M400 does have a hot accessory shoe.

Sony HDR-FX7 $1998.00

Sony HDR-FX7

The Sony FX7 is an update to one of Sony’s most popular prosumer cameras, the FX1. This camera has a mini microphone input, a headphone jack, and a manual audio dial. It has a powerful, 20x zoom which is an upgrade from the 12x zoom of the FX1. If the idea of recording on tape rather than SD cards appeals to you, the FX7 fit’s the bill. It uses ordinary MiniDV tapes that can be purchased just about anywhere. It shoots in Sony HDV 1080i which is 1440x1080. The FX-7 has a giant 3.5” LCD screen and a manual focus ring. You won’t find those features at this price point in many other cameras.

Panasonic AG HMC-150 $3,170.00

Panasonic AG HMC-150

A camera of this quality would have cost over $10,000 five years ago. The Panasonic HMC-150 has professional dual XLR audio inputs, headphone jack, and manual audio controls. The camera features a 13x optical zoom and shoots on SD cards. There are several different HD modes including 1920x1080i. The HMC-150 has a 3.5 inch LCD screen and manual focus ring. It is very widely used by television stations and production companies. It is probably a little pricey for startups. But if you have the budget, you won’t be disappointed.

Must Have Accessories

Choosing a camera is a big step but you’re not ready to produce a high quality video yet. You will also need a tripod, camera bag, microphone(s), and a spare battery to get started. When it comes to tripods and camera bags, judge what you need by how much money you spent on your camera.

A consumer level $40 or $50 tripod may be just fine for a lightweight consumer camera. I wouldn’t let a Sony FX7 or Panasonic HMC 150 anywhere near one of those. The Manfrotto 501 Fluid Head ($180) is about as good as it gets for tripod heads. Couple that head with a quality set of legs ($200-$300) and your video will be rock solid with smooth pans and tilts. A $20 camera bag from Target will be sufficient to protect a consumer level camera as long as you’re not rough with it. For larger cameras like the HMC-150 a more heavy duty bag from Porta Brace ($190) is worth the investment. For those of you that often travel by air, an airline safe case is a necessity.

Lavalier Microphone

Just about every business oriented video producer is going to want a lavalier microphone. These are the clip on style mics. Lower quality microphones tend to have interference problems like hissing. Audio Technica and Shure have solid offerings at reasonable prices. If most of your subjects will be seated while speaking a hard wired microphone will be just fine. However, if you plan to shoot at conferences or trade shows, a wireless microphone kit is worth investing in. Using a lavalier microphone requires the producer to attach the microphone on the subject. If you plan to interview several people, a handheld stick microphone will be more efficient. For outdoor shoots like sporting events, I recommend a shotgun microphone.

No matter what camera you buy, purchase an extra battery. Even the high end cameras come with just one battery that usually lasts a few hours. A high capacity spare battery typically lasts four or five hours and costs between $50 and $100 depending on the camera.

Other accessories to consider include a light kit, editing software, and noise cancelling headphones.

Where can you buy these products? If there is a local retailer you’re comfortable with, by all means use them. If there is a problem you can walk right into their shop and get face-to-face service. Personally, I purchase all of my equipment from B&H Photo Video in New York. They have an incredible website with detailed information & reviews on everything they stock. Most of the professional producers I know also buy from B&H. In addition to great service, they have the lowest credible prices on everything you need to complete a professional video production. Yes, there are some sites that advertise lower prices on some products. But I wouldn’t trust most of them with my credit card information.

Good luck with your new endeavor into the world of video production. Remember, most video producers have years of schooling and experience. They couldn’t walk into your office and do your job as well as you do. It’s going to take some time and effort before you’re fully satisfied with your videos. However, today’s equipment and software has certainly shortened the learning curve.

Chat with Your Customers on Social Media Pages

2011-12-12T10:24:00.000-06:00

Now You Can Answer Questions Live on Facebook

Some of our clients have been taking customer service to a new level by offering live chat services with their customers on social media pages. By adding a chat button to their corporate Facebook page, they are making themselves more available to anyone interested in their services. With the ever-increasing importance of social media, company Facebook pages can be as important as your main website. This will allow your clients and visitors to ask questions and interact with your staff in a more personable way.

This icon will appear on your site
when you're available to chat live

Live Chat is an interactive web tool that was built for companies to use on their main website. It is an interactive and cost effective tool that helps you sell your product online and give superior customer support. With just the click of the mouse, your website visitors can contact your support team for live assistance through the Provide Support live chat system. This system also does more than allow you to provide the best customer service out there. It also gives you real-time monitoring; letting you see a visitor list, geo location maps, navigation history, referal url and much more. It also includes a large variety of useful traffic stats to help you learn more about where your visitors are coming from and for what.

Foremost Media offers these services to you to help you increase your level of customer service. Live Chat is an amazing way for you to make things easier on yourself and your company, as well as provide help to your customers like never before. You must have this program installed on your actual website to be able to incorporate it into your social media pages.

If you're interested in this service on your website or on your Facebook page, please contact our Social Media Expert Aaron Manogue at amanogue@foremostmedia.com or call at (608) 758-4841. Even if you'd just like to talk about the service a little bit more and get more information, he'd be happy to talk to you.

Tell me what you want me to do!

2011-12-01T09:05:00.000-06:00

Have you ever sat through one of those time share pitches? I've had the privilege of sitting through several in my life time and each one wraps up with a clear message- "BUY NOW". Time share sales folks want you to sign up before you leave. They know that if you leave the presentation and think it over you probably won't be back or you might go look at a competitor. They wouldn't sell many time shares if they gave you a big sales pitch and never asked you to buy, but that is just what a lot of websites do.

Many website owners spend a lot of time and money getting people to their website but don't make it clear to the visitor exactly what they want them to do when they get there. Should they call you? Do you want them to make a purchase? Should they download a demo, or watch a video? Every page of your website should have a clear call to action!

Hold the spam when promoting your website

2011-11-23T08:15:00.000-06:00

Almost every day I delete links from companies that are putting useless comments on our blog like:

Hello, I love reading through your blog, I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. Wish you best of luck for all your best efforts. web designing companies Delhi, website making company in Delhi

this is really nice. thank you for sharing.By Tallahassee web design on Do Outside Blogs Help Your Websites Search Engine ...

As you can see the post aren't necessarily negative but one thing is consistent between all these "Spam Comments". They all have key word rich hyper-links that link back to their respective websites (I've removed the links for this post)

The purpose of this blog post is two fold:

If your a spammer please stop posting stuff like this on our blog. We will delete it. We welcome comments that add value to the conversation but if we think that the goal of the comment is to get a back link to your site your comment will be marked as spam and deleted promptly.
I wanted to answer the question- Why do companies bother posting comments on blogs as a way to build back links? I can sum it up in one word: Backlinks.

Backlinks are the links from other sites which link to your blog or webpage. The major search engines view back links to your site as a vote of editorial confidence and good quality links from other sites can help boost your rankings in the search engines especially if that link is from a site that has related content themes to your site.

So comment spam is a good thing right?-- Wrong- let me leave you with this little warning from the Official Google Webmaster Blog:

FACT: Comment spammers are often trying to improve their site's organic search ranking by creating dubious inbound links to their site. Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links. Think of all the more productive things one could do with that time and energy that would provide much more value for one's site in the long run.

Promote your site without comment spam

If you want to improve your site's visibility in the search results, spamming comments is definitely not the way to go. Instead, think about whether your site offers what people are looking for, such as useful information and tools.

What to Post on Your Company's Social Media Pages

2011-11-16T14:03:00.000-06:00

It seems like more and more we get clients that are joining the trend and having us put together social media pages for their companies. This is such a smart thing for them to do. The only problem is, once they're all set up and looking great, what in the world are they supposed to post? What follows is my (Aaron Manogue, Search Engine & Social Media Marketing Expert) response to a recent email that I received. Take a look and learn a few tips that will help you know what to post and how.

Hi Aaron,

Now that our LinkedIn page is set up, how do we make the most of our company profile? Do we put a LinkedIn button on our website? How often should we post company updates? Are there ‘best practices’ to get the most from our profile?

Thank you,

"Client"

This was my response to their email:

Dear "Client",
What I always try and tell people is to post to their social media pages on Thursday or Friday of each week, or at least every other week. This includes LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter if you have them all. You don’t have to make 3 different posts to each one, just post the same thing to them all because your followers on Twitter may not follow you on Facebook or YouTube and vice versa. The reason I tell companies to do this is because they can sit down and think about a recap of what was going on in the company that week. Posting a link to a new product you’re working on or simply talking about what’s going on in the company (new products, expansions, community service, etc.) is exactly what you should post. And remember to be personable and professional. Write it like you’re telling your good friend about the exciting stuff that’s going on at work. Sometimes that’s hard to do because work isn’t always exciting, :) but if you write it like you’re talking to a friend, while staying as professional as possible, makes it easier and more interesting to read.

I would definitely put a linkedin button on your site as well as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube if you have them. Make a transition from your site to your (social media) pages and back again as seamless as possible, is great for getting people to follow you on social media.

Important Items Highlighted:

1. Post every Thursday or Friday (This depends on your industry as well. If you're a restaurant with daily specials, post them each day)

2. Be professional and personable

3. Talk about what's going on inside the company (New products, company/individual awards or certifications, involvement in the community, etc.)

4. It doesn't always have to be strictly business. Wish your followers a Happy Holiday or weekend or just plain tell them to have a great day! Being personable and not just being all about business shows customers that your care about them outside of sales.

Measuring Return on Investment on PPC

2011-11-15T13:09:00.000-06:00

Everyone knows that using Google and Facebook advertising is a very effective way to get your products and services in front of your target market. Facebook is possibly the most targeted platform to advertise on because of the fact that 92% of the 800 million + users willingly submit personal data such as age, sex, race, etc. to it. Google is right on track with their advertising because of their in-depth program and years of experience. So given the fact that they are both very good forms of advertisement, which do you use? And how much do you spend each month? But most importantly, how do you figure out if you are getting a decent return on investment each month.

Here are some sample numbers that I'm using to make this a little bit easier. simply substitute your statistics to apply to you and your accounts:

Unique Visitors: April 1st - November 9th, 2011 = 19,815
Average Sale on the Site: $206.16
# of Sales on the Site (Given Date): = 622

# of Sales/Visitors= 3.1 % Conversion Rate

Google Pay-Per-Click ROI Calculation

Google PPC Clicks to the Site: 1290

Total Cost PPC Campaign: $1,290 @ $1/click

With 3.1% Site Conversion Rate: 38.7 Purcahses x $206.16 = $7,979.39 (Gross Sales) or $6,689.39 after cost of PPC

Let's assume you have a 40% Profit Margin = $4,013.63 net

Facebook PPC ROI Calculation:
Facebook PPC Clicks To The Site: 636
Total Cost PPC Campaign: $750.48 @ $1.18/click
With 3.1% Site Conversion Rate: 19.7 Purchases x $206.16 = $4,061.359 (Gross Sales) = Net After PPC= $3,310.87
Lets assume you have a 40% Profit Margin= $1,324.34 Net

Is Social Media Necessary for Your Company?

2011-10-26T12:24:00.002-06:00

Every day now it seems like we talk with a client or prospective client that asks us why it's important for "a company like theirs" to use social media. Most of them belong to major manufacturing or industrial companies, that if you think about it, might not make any sales off of a site like Facebook or Twitter. So why is it STILL important for companies like that to be involved in social media. It's because the amount of brand awareness, company exposure and potential client base that you can build essentially for free is limitless. We put together an infographic to visually express why we think it's important every company has some sort of presence on social media.

What the New Facebook Means for Businesses

2011-09-27T08:22:00.001-06:00

Everyone that uses the "almighty" Facebook has definitely noticed their big changes that they implemented last week. And as many of you know, not very many people are happy about them. You are just worried about that business Facebook page that they've spent hundred of hours on building, maintaining and expanding. So what do all of these changes mean for you and your business page?

There are two major underlying changes that business owners need to be aware of when it comes to posting on their Facebook wall. Oversharing and overloading. They sound like one in the same, right? Not really. As always, being a business owner on Facebook is a challenging task. You must interact with customers on a personal and positive level, but you have to make sure that you don't over do it. Just like any other type of marketing material, people don't want to be flooded with hundreds of ads continuously. I always tell people, "Effective marketing messages with minimal contact." Make what you put out there such high quality that you don't need to contact potential customers 100 times to have them get the point. This goes the same for Facebook posts. Make your posts valuable and effective so you don't have to post every single day.

On the other hand, overloading is loading up your page with so many applications that when people come to your page, they are distracted by all the bright shiny lights, applications and games that have nothing to do with your products and services. Games and applications are great ways to get people to your page, don't get me wrong. But if you have so many that people have no idea what your products and services are, what's the point? My suggestion is to stick to the basics, be personable and give people quality.

The less you waste people's time and the more you seem like an actual person instead of a business, the more interaction you will receive. And interaction leads to relationships, and better relationships, lead to sales.

Facebook Edgerank: How to Get Your Posts to Appear More Often on Your Fan's News Feeds

2011-09-16T11:12:00.000-06:00

You make interesting posts and you try to be as personable as possible, but it just seems like your posts aren't popping up on your fan's feeds very often. What is it that determines which posts appear more often and higher on news feeds? It's called Facebook Edgerank and the higher you can make your rank, the more exposure you'll get to your fans. It's a win/win. Edgerank is a complicated algorithm seen below, so what the heck does it mean to you?

Huh? You're still lost? Yeah, so are we.

Ue= affinity score between viewing user and edge creator

We= weight of this edge type (create, comment, like, tag, etc.) Essentially it means, how popular is the post

De= time decay factor based on how long ago the edge was created

Affinity

This is a score based on the proximity or how friendly you are with someone. You've probably noticed this before; checking out someone's page a few times within an hour and all of a sudden they are in your news feed more often

Edge (Post) Weight

This is a basic formula which determines the importance of a post. Pictures are more important than text posts, videos are more important than someone "liking" a page, etc. There's no set-in-stone hierarchy to certain types of posts, but there are certain types of posts that clearly do have higher Edgerank than others.

Recency

The final element of this equation is related to frequency, also known as time decay. The longer a post has been up, the more it has "decayed." Newer posts have higher edgerank because of the fact that they're news! People want recent information, not something from two days ago.

Don't worry about the math, just do the following to up the "weight" of your edgerank and effectively increase your prominence on fan's feeds.

There are a few distinct post types you can use to raise your Edgerank and increase your visibility to your fans:

1. Videos
Posting videos are seen as an action of high value and importance. People would rather watch videos than read long posts about your products. Let's face it...people like information to come easy.

2. Links
Links automatically generate a short summary and picture from the page you're linking to, which makes your post stick out a ton more than a typical text post.

3. Encourage Interaction
Asking for input, suggestions, or opinions is a great way to get your fans to interact with your page and company. Making sure people understand that you value their input is a huge part in the success of your business.

4. Be Personable
It doesn't always have to be business! Wishing your fans a happy holiday or to have a nice weekend goes a long way to get people to value your company and it's products and services. Be a friend before you try selling them something and your sales pitches will go a lot further.

5. Post During the Social Media Rush Hour
There have been thousands of studies on when the best time to post is, but in our experience, posting between 3 and 5 pm is by far the best time. We think this is true because people are getting done with work and logging into Facebook to check on what is going on. Numbers have shown that Facebook traffic almost doubles between these hours.

New .xxx domain names- How will they effect my business or trade mark?

2011-09-08T08:21:00.002-06:00

ICANN (The domain name governing body) has recently announced the release of .xxx domain extensions. Members of the adult entertainment industry are now submitting registration requests for domain names with the new .XXX extension which correspond to their existing domain names and trademarks.

Many of our clients have received solicitations from domain registrars encouraging them to file an application to block their domain from the .xxx extension with costs for this service between $200-$1,000 per year.

I'm not a lawyer but here is my opinion on this:

As the Internet grows ICANN is going to keep coming out with extensions (.biz. net .xxx). I feel that it's a waste of time and money to keep buying up extensions just to protect your brand. People looking for a legit product or service won't be typing in yourdomain.xxx they Google you or use the domain printed on your marketing materials.

At Foremost Media, we own the .com, .net and .biz extensions and we use them for different purposes like a support site, email and server routing. I wont be blocking ForemostMedia.xxx. In my opinion this is a tactic by domain registrars to get you to spend money. I would also believe that .xxx sites would be the subject of heavy filtering on search engines so unless your looking for porn they I just don't see .xxx domains popping up on a Foremost Media searches.

If you do decide to pass on blocking your the .xxx version of your trademark or domain ICANN also provides opportunities to challenge trade mark violations in domains down the road via their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy ("UDRP").

When to Tweet

2011-08-04T09:09:00.000-06:00

I read a great article about when to tweet by Andrew Phelps who was basically reaping a presentation from Dan Zarrella so for those of you with a short attention span like me here is my summary of Andrew's article that summarizes Dan's presentation.

When and how often to tweet - A few key takeaways:

If your goal is more followers Tweet More: Twitter’s A-listers — those with the most followers — tweet an average of 22 times a day
If your goal is more visitors to your site tweet less - accounts that share two or more links an hour show a dramatically lower clickthrough rate than those who share no more than one
The trick is to reach people when the noise of the crowd has died down. - That time is the afternoon when news sites are slower and on the weekend
Retweet activity is highest late in the work day, between 2 and 5 p.m.
Check out TweetWhen to find out what time of day is the best time to tweet for you. Turns out my prime time is Thursdays at 10PM- I guess I have some late night followers @jonballard
It's ok to tweet the same links two or three times a day- change up the verbiage and let it rip.

Here are Dan's Power Point Slides: The Science of Timing

Facebook Losing Millions of Users

2011-06-15T14:08:00.005-06:00

Over the past month, there have been several national publications that have been reporting on the decline in user on the infamous social networking site Facebook. In response to the growing reports, Facebook released the following statement.

"From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn't designed to be a source of tracking the overall growth of Facebook. "

Recently, CNN interviewed social media expert and author Paul Gillin about the sudden decline in the social media outlet that has changed our lives more than we know. Gillin doesn't agree with Facebook's claim that these reports are inaccurate based off of their methodology stating,

"Facebook has never criticized the methodology before. The fact is that the methodology that was used to determine these numbers has been consistent and has shown about a 4% decline in U.S. membership over the last month."

So if not for the inaccurate methodology, and Facebook really is losing ground, what could be the possible factors?

College Graduates: Originally, Facebook was actually limited to college students. You needed an active college email address to become a member. College age students also now make up a vast majority of the active users on Facebook. So why would they delete their accounts? Graduation! Each year, Facebook experiences a loss of users due to the fact that students who are graduating college are on the job hunt, and don't want potential employers seeing pictures of them doing keg stands on the internet.

Privacy and Bullying Concerns: There is a growing number of parents that are concerned with their children being on the internet and having pictures and tons of information about them out there for anyone to see. The trend has been parents refusing to let their children even be part of Facebook until they are of legal age. Bullying online has also become a growing concern for children and parents alike. Access to a child's interests and every move is perfect ammunition for bullies to hound and badger fellow classmates online.

Law of Diminishing Returns: Facebook has reached every nook and cranny of the world, especially the United States. Over half of the U.S. population has a Facebook account currently, meaning the room for growth has started to hit it's sealing meaning Facebook has had to focus on expanding overseas to other markets.

Spam: We all have experienced this in some way or another on Facebook. We don't want to see our friends high scores on Farmville or Mafia Wars 30 times in an hour. Facebook has started to implement privacy and publishing restrictions customizable by individual users as to what is posted on their wall or Status Feed to help reduce this, but it's inevitable to continue.

So our fellow Facebook junkies, what do you credit for the diminishing users on the world's #1 social media site?

How much traffic do you need to make money with Google AdSense?

2011-05-11T09:04:00.002-06:00

Recently we have built quite a few sites that offer freeware software or free content on a subject matter with an advertiser monetized publishing model and the majority of these clients are looking to AdSense as their revenue source. For those of you that don't know Google AdSense is:

"Google Ad Sense As defined by Google- An ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis"

One question I often here is:

How much money will I make with AdSense?

With our clients permission we took a look at the Click Through Rates and the Cost Per Click on 3 different sites (Golf, Health and Wellness and Hunting) going back to 2007. We averaged the Cost per click and the Click Through Rates across the three sites. It is important to note that the placement of the ads and the color of the ads is different on each site but all 3 sites have ads on all the pages in very visible areas.

Year	Click Through Rate (CTR)	Clicks/ 20,000 Page Views	Cost Per Click	Earnings/20,000 Page Views
2011	1.13%	226	.30	$67.80
2010	1.58%	316	.32	$101.12
2009	1.22%	244	.28	$68.32
2008	1.93%	386	.21	$81.06
2007	3.00%	600	.18	$108.00

So what is this chart telling us? For one thing people are clicking on far less ads today then they were in 2007. The second big thing that jumped out to me is that cost per click is way up from .18 cents in 2007 to .30 cents in the first quarter of 2011 (Across these three sites anyway).

So back to the original question (How much money can I make with AdSense?)- The three sites we looked at average around 3 pages per visit so it takes around 6,666 people to the site to generate 20,000 page views. In 2011 that is about a penny per visitor.

Why Facebook Fans are Valuable and How to Properly Supply Them with Marketing

2011-05-06T13:14:00.000-06:00

They are as common in every day life now as eating, sleeping, and breathing. They are in magazines, on commercials, in stores; literally, everywhere we go. They are the begs and pleas from companies of all types to become a fan or "like" their Facebook page. Most people just tend to think, "What are we in high school again where everything is a popularity contest and the more people you know the better?" Well, in a way, yeah.

What good can having more Facebook "likes" do for you business? So, someone takes a mere 2 seconds out of their day to click "Like" on your page. Big deal, right? It is a big deal! These people are voluntarily electing to opt-in to your future posts. This means they are subjecting themselves to your marketing efforts at your will. So every time you make a post or an update on a special, all of your fans are given the opportunity to see the special, and then they can easily, with just a few clicks, post it for their friends to see as well.

"Expand the reach of your business beyond the reaches of you location and much further than traditional advertising could ever take you with a Facebook Fan Campaign from Foremost Media"

If their friends like the deal that means a few things:
1) They'll more than likely participate in the deal and spend money with you
2) They'll "like" your page on Facebook, further expanding the reach of future posts
3) They'll share future deals or news with their friends, and the cycle continues.

-On average, fans spend an extra $71.84 they would not otherwise spend on products they describe themselves fans of
-Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand
-Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends

Keep Fans Interested!
Now that we know why these fans and likes are important to your online success, what are the best practices to continue to keep fans interested and entice other people to become fans.

1) Be Personable: You're running a business, but you're on Facebook, a SOCIAL network. Make posts like you would on your own personal Facebook page. Make posts that aren't always about business. Wish them a good weekend or a Happy Holiday! Be funny (without being offensive), be inviting, and most of all, just talk like you're a human and NOT marketing verbiage read off of a piece of paper.

For Example:
-Don't: "Our 3400 Series of Swing Sets are built with durable wood and quality metal parts. Visit our website to purchase today!"
-Do: "The weather this weekend is supposed to be sunny and warm! Get your kids out of the house and try out our 3400 Series of Swing Sets. 10% this week only! Now that's what we call a great family weekend!"

2) Be Professional: After all, you are running a business. Make sure your spelling is accurate and you always present yourself as a high quality company. If I'm someone who's never heard of your company, what am I going to think the very first time I visit your page and read your posts?

3) Entice Interaction: The most successful Facebook campaigns are those that get fans to interact with the page. Ask questions about things having to do with your company, or be personable (again) and ask questions like "It's going to be a gorgeous weekend! What does everyone have planned?" The more you can entice readers to respond and interact with you on a positive note, the more likely they'll remember you when they need your goods and services.

4) Be Interesting: Don't post things that don't make any sense to anyone that isn't in your industry. Speak to people using the most understandable terms. Use things that are unique and interesting to catch their attention and again entice them to interact. Your company is special, make sure people can see why you're different than the rest.

5) Do NOT Overdo It: People have chosen to be submitted to your marketing and thoughts at YOUR will. But this doesn't mean you want to flood their Facebook Pages with updates from your company. Making a schedule or at least a pattern of releasing posts or updates is very important. Give people what they want, but don't force feed them. Making a schedule to post something new 2-3 times every week is good for some companies, but once a day may be more appropriate for others. Getting a feel for the type of information people want and the frequency they want to receive it is essential.

Interested in Starting a Facebook Fan Campaign with us and Igniting your Facebook Page? Click Below!

Do Outside Blogs Help Your Websites Search Engine Rankings?

2011-04-21T16:02:00.000-06:00

One of the questions we get quite often around here is "Does having a blog for my company help my search engine rankings?"

My answer is Yes- a blog can absolutely help your search engine rankings. With that said let me be clear- Manipulation of search rankings is not the reason to start a blog. I know what your thinking, "Jon, you just totally contradicted yourself". Let me explain:

If your going to do a blog it needs to be a good blog with valuable content that is related to your core business.

By design blogs do a lot of things very well and when used regularly and correctly can help you earn better search engine rankings. In fact setting up a blog on a different domain like .blogger.com or .wordpress.com can often achieve rankings faster than a brand new websites. Here is why- AGE - Most search engine experts agree that the longer your domain has been registered the better it will rank. When you set up a blog using a subdomain like .wordpress.com or .blogger.com (Two sites that have been in existence for a long time) and age of your blog's domain makes Google Happy!

Here are a few more reasons to start a blog for your business:

Blogs invite user comment which essentially keeps content fresh and fresh content makes Google Happy.
Blogs are often easier to publish to than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often and fresh content makes Google Happy.
A blog is a great place to post content that is related to your business but just doesn't quite fit into the professional nature of your website and this type of related content that links to your website makes Google Happy.

Note- When creating a new blog post, be sure that the content in the post offers valuable content. If your blog post is realted to a service or product your company provides link to that product or service from your blog post. This is one of the biggest benefits of a blog. You can generate good related content and link it to your site. The other obivous benifit is that your blog can send your website visitors. Remember, people will be more likley to click on the links in your blog if your blog offers value.

The bottom line is a good blog with links to your site can and will improve your link popularity, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings and that makes your bosses happy!

Here a great resources on increasing blog traffic:

21 Tactics To Increase Blog Traffic

SEO for Local Businesses

2011-04-12T15:17:00.000-06:00

Foremost Media Local SEO for Businesses

Every day more and more people are putting away that big yellow phonebook and turning to local internet searches in their hometown. According to a recent article published on EntireWeb.com, research has shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of households do some kind of search for a local product or serviceEVERY SINGLE DAY! What does this mean for your local business? It means you need to be in the right places when people are searching for your business.

"It's a GOOD THING that you're a small business, because that means we can position you to compete against only those businesses within your area, not any national businesses or coporations"

3 Steps to Local Business Success

Site Optimization

Just as any SEO program, local or not, you need to make sure that your website is doing everything it can to be detected by seach engines when someone in your local area is looking for a business with the services you offer. We make sure your site has the location and service area of your business in all the places the Google, Bing and Yahoo look for.

We're talking page titles, footers, meta tags and much more that is imperative that you include your address and service area. We help you find the keywords that people are searching for already within your industry and transform your pages and site structure to conform to the things that search engines look for when ranking these terms. Doing this is your way of telling the search engine "I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!"

"I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!"

-Keyword Research & Analysis
-Page Titles
-Header and Footer Adjustments
-Link Building

Social Media

It doesn’t matter where you go, Facebook and Twitter are EVERYWHERE! Most local companies we talk to think this is stuff for the big wigs at giant corporations and thehigh money rollers on Wall Street…WRONG! If social media is built for anyone, it’s built perfectly for local businesses like yours. Running a local business is all about building and maintaining a good relationship with your customers and what better a place then being able to let them know about specials, sales and anything new then in their own home or on their smart phone.

Facebook is making it possible to offer discounts and coupons for those who frequent your store, sent directly to their computer or phone. Being able to reach out and interact with your customers when they aren’t even in your store or at your shop is extremely powerful. So let us help you build your Facebook and Twitter pages and we’ll show you the power of maintaining relationships with customers outside the walls of your business, and how easy it can be.

Google Places

Getting Found Online by People in Your Community

-Help customers find your business on Google
-Show photos, respond to reviews, offer coupons and more
-Get insights to make better business decisions

When you search Google or Yahoo for a product or service with location phrases in your keywords (Janesville web design, Rock County heating & cooling, etc.), you will see the search engines display a map at the top of the search results with up to 10 “Local” search results. Below is an example of a local search on Google for “Janesville Wisconsin Web design.” The first ten listings are local Janesville Web Design companies, followed by natural listings.

New Features of Google Local Search

Google Tags: Want to help your business stand out from the competition?

Add Google Tags, a new advertising feature, to your Google Places Local Search account:

Tags are yellow markers that allow you the business owner to promote important aspects of their businesses. Scroll over tags on Google or click the sponsored link to view coupons, photos, or other select features.

Get more customers

Save time advertising

Control your budget

Service Area: Let potential customers see your service area to show the reach of your company’s services and products

Some companies operate from a home address, but offer services and products far beyond the reach of the business’ front door. Now you are no longer are you limited to only list your business location and address. You can now show customers searching for your services your service area customizable specifically for your business by location or distance from your business address.

We offer all of this for a one time fee of $425! Sign up for our Local SEO package today and start attracting more local customers! (608) 758-4841 and ask for our SEO Expert Aaron Manogue!

For more information on getting started with Google Local and to start getting your business found online locally, contact Foremost Media at (608)758‐4841 or to speak with our Social Media & Search Engine Marketing expert Aaron Manogue, email him at amanogue@foremostmedia.com to see what Foremost Media can do for your local business TODAY!

The Best Link Building Letter Ever

2011-04-05T16:48:00.003-06:00

Let me preface this post by saying that building good quality links to your website is one the most effective things you can do to get better search engine rankings. Apart from the actual content on your site much of where your positioned in the search engine rankings depends on the number of good quality related links to your site.

Here at Foremost Media we manage a lot of websites for a lot of different companies and there is hardly a day that goes by when I don't get an email from someone working on a link building campaign. Typically those folks look at the "Whois" information (Domain Registration Records) for one of our clients sites and some how end up in my email box (Technical Contact). Most link campaign letters sound something like this:

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY:
Reciprocal link request

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY:
I'm the webmaster of a ~~MyWebsiteHere~~ website at ~~www.mywebsitehere.com~~

We are interested in putting a link to your site and we ask in return that you put a link to our website with the following information: (Info Deleted for blog post)

Please give us a title, a description and an address to link to. We will put a link to your website, in the relevant region, as soon as you agree to the exchange

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us and please identify the website you are representing if you are a third party representative.

Today I received a really well written link request from a company claiming to be from a "Cancer Center Advocacy Website" (A specific type of cancer that has a lot of advertising around it):

GOOD EMAIL LINK BUILDING SUBJECT LINE (Almost):
Fire Sfaety Resource (They Spelled Fire Safety Wrong but other then that the letter was really pretty good)

GREAT EMAIL LINK BUILDING BODY:
Hi,
I was browsing through state fire associations online and I like that you have a section dedicated to fire safety/ health resources at ~~myclientswebsiteaddress.com~~ (One of our fire department clients).

My name is ~~Real Persons Name~~ (I deleted it for the purpose of this post but a real name is a nice touch) and I'm the Public Awareness Coordinator for the "Cancer Center" (Name Changed Here). We understand that local fire departments are tasked with keeping the community safe. Thus, as a public service, we are teaming up with fire departments across the country to help educate the nation about the dangers of asbestos and how to avoid it. This can include how to spot asbestos (pictures), common locations, how to test the air, and even asbestos information specific to your community.

I noticed you currently have some mesothelioma information on your site. I would be honored if you would explore our site, provide us with feedback, and consider using our site as a resource on your links page as an additional resource.

Anything you can do to help us spread awareness would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for the information you provide to your community. I look forward to hearing from you and have a great afternoon!

Best Regards,
~~Real Persons Name~~ (Once again I deleted the real name)
Public Awareness Director

I can't confirm or deny this next statement but my guess is that the "Cancer Center" is not a real place but rather a website built with the sole intention of generating leads for lawyers. While the site does contains a ton of great info on Mesothelioma it also contains some not so subtle links to receive a free informational packet on Mesothelioma. Anyway, that's not the point of this post so let's get back to the good link building email. Here are the key things I think this email does right:

1. It's not a hard sell- They appear to be offering me some help.
2. It's from a real person with a real title.
3. It's actually targeted at a page on my clients site that is relevant.
4. The email is actually tailored to my clients industry (Fire Departments).

I hope you find this post interesting. I would guess that the odds of successful link building would be much higher for the "Cancer Center" then the firsts email example I gave. For the record I'm not a big fan of spam emails to webmasters requesting links but as I said before incoming links are very important to search engine marketing. My best advice to you is "If you really want to build good links build GREAT CONTENT and folks will link to it naturally!"

Multiple Language Sites Done Right

2011-03-30T07:32:00.002-06:00

Over the past year the Foremost Media team has completed over a half dozen multi language website development projects. At the start of each of these projects one of the most common questions we receive is "Should we build the site with all the languages on the same domain or you use local domains for each language (example.de, example.it,example.nl, etc.)?"

Google's Matt Cutts answers how webmasters should handle local content of a website.

One message that we got loud and clear form this video is that if your thinking about going the easy route and using an auto-translation tool to generate your translation websites Google might consider that spam.

According to Matt (Google) when ever possible, it's best to put your translated content on separate domains localized domains. Doing this sends a clear message to the search engines about what language/country your website is targeted at.

QR Codes Have Come Of Age

2011-03-23T17:46:00.000-06:00

So how is your company using QR Codes? Do you know what a QR Code is? I recently read an article about how over half of the connections made to the internet on any given day in 2012 will be on a mobile device. We have been using QR Codes in our written proposals for the last few months. Below is an example of one of the little graphics we use in our presentations:

The time has come to take another look at these unique codes. Your going to be seeing a lot of these guys!

SEO Basics Episode 1 Keword Research | Foremost Media

2011-03-22T16:43:00.000-06:00

SEO Basics Episode 1 Key Word Research | Foremost Media

Tune in and watch the Foremost Media team as we break down the steps involved in getting your site to rank well on the search engines. In this episode we discuss keyword research. Key word research is one of the first steps in the search engine optimization process and is often overlooked by webmasters. Jon Ballard breaks down some of the keyword basics and provides links to several tools used by our professional Search Engine Marketers to do Keyword Research.

Have a Google Adwords campaign? Beware of "Invalid Clicks" or "Click Fraud"

2011-03-16T11:08:00.001-06:00

Recently we had a client who we run a large Adwords campaign for that asked us, "Why are all of these credits to my account appearing on my statement for Google Adwords as "Invalid Clicks"? An "Invalid Click" is defined by Google as:

"Invalid click activity consists of any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings, and for which we decide not to charge the advertiser. This includes, but is not limited to, clicks or impressions generated by a publisher clicking on his own ads, a publisher encouraging clicks on his ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software"

So since we clearly aren't going through and clicking on our own ads to run our cost up, what does this mean? Clearly there are certainly going to be instances that people click the ads and accidentally double click them or maybe they click the ad and then bookmark your page, meaning the cookie that Google puts into their browser on that page turns into a "click" each time they go back to your page.

But then there's the darker side of it all. Our client sat down with us and went over his Adwords invoice and there were typical "invalid click" credits to his account for $.10-.60 at a time. These are obviously from the innocent double clicks or something of that nature. Then we spotted a few credits that seemed extremely suspicious to us. Two credits between $100-150; a considerable amount of money especially considering daily budgets are rarely set any higher than $50-100/day.

This meant that someone, more than likely a competitor, was purposely going and clicking our clients ads hundreds even thousands of times in order to reach their daily budget, thus shutting down the ads for the day. They could have been doing so in many ways: paying someone to sit there and click the ads (Yes, there are companies out there that pay people to do this), sitting there themselves and doing it, or paying for a bot to go through and automatically click the ads until they don't appear anymore.

The client was very upset by this (and rightfully so) and wanted to know what action he could take to figure out who it was and take further action if necessary. Google offers little help on this end due to privacy laws in finding out who or what (bots) was causing the invalid clicks. Basically we were left with the following answer from Google (This is only a synopsis of what Google sent us):

"WHO IS CLICKING ON YOUR ADS : We are not able to release any information on the users that are clicking on your ads. However, if you have access to your site's web logs, they will often contain information on the IP addresses of the users that are clicking on your ads. You can obtain this information from your webmaster.

HOW GOOGLE DEALS WITH INVALID CLICKS : The security of AdWords advertisers is a top priority for Google. Please be assured that we will continue to monitor all clicks on your ads to prevent abuse. For more information about the steps we take to combat invalid click activity, please visithttp://www.google.com/adwords/adtrafficquality/overview..html"

How secure are your passwords?

2011-03-06T17:22:00.004-06:00

Hackers are getting more sophisticated all the time. Let's look at a few common passwords and the maximum time it would take a hacker to figure out each password using a simple key search attack:

Passwords using just numbers (0123456789):

2-4 number passwords etc: Less then 1 Second
5-6 number passwords: About 10 seconds
7 number passwords: 17 Minutes

Passwords using the standard alphabet all lower case or all upper case (abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxyz):

3 letter passwords: Less then 2 Seconds
4 letter passwords: Less then 46 Seconds
5 letter passwords: 20 Minutes
6 letter passwords: 8.5 Hours
7 letter passwords: 9 days

Passwords using a combination of numbers and letters all upper case and all lower case or all upper case ( 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxyz):

3 character passwords or less: 4 Seconds or less
5 character passwords: 1.5 Hours

Passwords using letters and numbers with mixed upper and lower case combinations:

4 characters: 24.5 Minutes
5 characters: 1 Day
7 characters: 11 Years

Below is a list of some of the most common passwords used on the internet:

123456
12345
pass
iloveyou
password
abc123

By avoiding common passwords and using a combination of letters and numbers in both upper and lower case you can greatly reduce your risk of getting hacked. Throw in a unusual character like a $ or ! and your odds are even less of being hacked. Most experts recommend a minimum of 7 characters as well.

Learn more about password strength here

Need Links? Give them something for free!

2010-11-30T14:26:00.002-06:00

I ran across an interesting website today that listed the top 100 US domains with the most unique back links. As any good SEO guy would tell you back links are one of the key factors in ranking well on the search engines so it got me thinking what are some of these websites doing to get so many unique back links? As you look at the list the answer is quite clear- GIVE WEBMASTERS SOMETHING THEY CAN USE!

Coming in first is Google Maps- This surprised me. I though for sure it would be just plain old Google but I guess when you think about it Google has done a great job of making their maps easy to import right into a website and it's unusual these days to find a site that doesn't have a Google Map on the contact us page.

In the number 6 position was Wordpress- Wordpress is one of the best FREE blog software tools.

Number 10 Youtube.com - Free video hosting with the ability to embed the videos onto a website (When you embed the videos you create a back link to Youtube)

Number 57 on the list - ezinearticles.com really stuck out in my mind as well. This site offers articles on a wide variety of content that webmasters can put into their website as long as they link back to ezinearticles.com. Apparently they do because the back links to this site are off the chart.

Check out the list for yourself. It's clear to me that if you really want to build a lot of great back links offering free tools or content is where it's at.

So I know what your thinking..."I'm a wedding photographer, how can I build a bunch of good back links I don't have anything to give away?" Let's think outside the box a bit here. How about a page on your site where you have a bunch of photos that anyone can download and use as long as they gave you credit in the form of a link below the photo(Free Wedding Stock Photos). Next time you shoot a wedding take some pictures of the cake, the buffet line, the decorations etc. Wouldn't you love some back links from a catering company, a cake decorating company a DJ??? All of these types of companies could benefit from some fee stock photos for their website and in return you could build some great links. You may not be in the top 100 but some good related back links will make a great deal of difference in your search engine rankings.

In the words of Jim Rohn: “Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.”

The home page is not the only page on your website

2010-11-24T08:05:00.000-06:00

A lot of the folks I speak to seem to think that the home page of the website should be the page that pops up on the search engines for every search term that is related to a company. In other words a lot of companies try and optimize their home page for every search term they want to rank well for. This is a big mistake.

As a general rule your SEO efforts will be most successful if you try and optimize for only one to two closely related search terms per page. You have a much better chance of ranking well for one or two closely related terms on a page then a bunch of somewhat relevant search terms.

Analyzing the value of a paid web banner ad

2010-11-03T15:53:00.000-06:00

Every so often I get a call or an email from a client that has just been approached by a publisher or marketing website trying to sell them the banner add. The jist of the question is something like this:

Do you think this site would be worth advertising on? It runs about $500/yr. with first page placement. www.websitenamehere.com He’s telling me that they’ve had 14,000 hits, 3,000 per year, which doesn’t include members.

The first thing I do is check a site like http://www.compete.com/ for some more meaningful and realistic traffic levels. Hits really mean nothing to a marketer and are are typically used by a webmaster that either doesn't know any better or is trying to make his site look better then it really is. Basically a hit is registered any time a file is requested on a website. A typical HTML home page with 3 pictures on it and 1 video on it could easily log 5 hits (3 Photos+1 Video +1HTML file=5 Hits) when viewed by a web surfer. A site like Compete.com will give you a better estimate of Unique Visitors Per Month- which I will use below in the analyzation process.

So I check out Compete.com and see that the site in question averages about 800 visitors per month.

That's 9,600 visits per year so you are paying 5.2 cents per visitor just for them to see your add.

If you get a 5% click through rate- (That's probably on the high side) That's 480 visitors or over $1.00/Click.

So now the question is would I be willing to pay $1.04/Click for leads from this site?????

The Facts on Search Engine Optimization

2010-07-21T08:04:00.000-06:00

The primary benefit of search engine optimization (SEO) is widely known as a prime placement on a search engine’s first result page. Companies across the globe are manipulating their website in order to achieve the elusive status of a first page appearance. There are many things that a company should be aware of in the SEO process. First, it will necessitate change and a significant amount of time. Along with this, keywords will be chosen and links will be earned. Above all, your company should set realistic goals for your search engine optimization.

Change

In order for SEO to be effective, you web page will change; it may be as simple as minor wording adjustments or it may be a complete overhaul. The HTML code on your site must be changed so that search engine spiders can easily scan your site. Along with this, the keywords for which you want to be known must appear throughout your web pages. If you are a small site competing against large sites with various blogs, communities, archives, and forums, your site will most likely require significant change in order to compete.

Time

SEO does not garner immediate results for your website. It should be seen as an ongoing marathon, instead of a ½ mile sprint. A search engine has to first find and index your website. Older, more established sites are rewarded a higher ranking because of their long-standing success. New sites require much more time, sometimes even years, to rank well in big search engines. On the other hand, some sites may only require relatively quick fixes to appear on the first page. Be persistent and continually work toward optimization success.

Keywords

In order to attract your target customer to your site, your keywords should be chosen specifically and deliberately. Although common words may appear on your list, it is also important to target the keywords to the best products/services/information on your site. For example, the website of a cosmetic dentist will contain keywords of elective dental treatments rather than general dental provisions. In this way, you are attracting your target audience to your site rather than those that are looking for something else entirely. It will often take time to find the best keywords.

Links

The right backlinks are crucial to your placement on Google’s results pages. Generally you are looking for links to your site from related websites. Your keywords should appear in the link text. If you only have links that were simple to get, it is likely that their influence will be minimal to Google or another major search engine. Create a high-quality, dynamic, attractive website in order to obtain good links. After all, if your content is bland and dull, no one will find it linkworthy.

Goals

Successful search engine optimization involves setting realistic goals. First of all, the objective is to draw your target audience to your website based on the keywords they have entered into the search engine. You need not lure just anyone to the site; the goal is the draw potential buyers to the site. Additionally, your goal should be to increase your sales based on the SEO efforts.

Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China???

2010-07-20T13:59:00.004-06:00

For about the last year or so I have been getting calls from many of our manufacturing customers that are in a panic because they have received an email with the subject line: "Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China".

The email claims to be with the department of Asian Domain registration service in China and they claim to have received a application from a company that is attempting to register my clients brand name in a domain.

This is a scam. They are attempting to sell you a bunch of over priced domain names. Don't be fooled. Often times the phone numbers in the email actually work but in none of the cases we have looked at have we found the companies initiating the emails NOT legitimate ICANN registrars.

Here is an example of one such email:

Subject: Notice of Internet Intellectual Property Rights Dispute in China
(If you are NOT CEO,please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent.Thanks.)

Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in China, have something need to confirm with you. we formally received an application on July 19,2010. one company which called "Brazil Kpore Investment S.A" are applying to register "YourCompanyName" as Brand Name and Domains.

YourCompanyName.asia (Asia)

YourCompanyName.hk (Hong Kong)

YourCompanyName.com.tw (Taiwan)

YourCompanyName.hk (Hong Kong)

YourCompanyName.net.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.org.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.tw (Taiwan)

YourCompanyName.com.sg (Singapore)

YourCompanyName.com.vn (Vietnam)

YourCompanyName.sg (Singa pore)

YourCompanyName.vn (Vietnam)

YourCompanyName.my (Malaysia)

YourCompanyName.ae (Arab Emirates)

YourCompanyName.co.kr (Korea)

YourCompanyName.kr (Korea)

YourCompanyName.cn (China)

YourCompanyName.com.cn (China)

But we found that "Brazil Kpore Investment S.A" is not the original owner of the brand and trademark in the checking period,which belong to your company .I need confirm with you whether your company authorized that company to register these domain name.If you have done that ,We will finish the registration for them and link to their website.

If not, please let me know ASAP.

In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is 7 workdays. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application.

Best Regards,
Peter Yan(Mr)
Auditing Consultant

Tel: +0086-566-2629-555 Fax: +0086-566-2629-666

Address:Room205, No.D4 Qingxi South Garden, South-ChangJiang Road,Guichi Shi District,Chizhou,China

UPDATE- 12/20/2011

Here is another email I received from what I believe is the same group:

Dear CEO,
(If you are not in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks)
We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. On Dec 15, 2011, we received an application from Hantong company requested "foremosthunting" as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?
Kind regards

Paul PangOffice Manager Shanghai Office (Head Office)3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200070, China Tel: +86-21-6191-8696 Mobile: +86-182-2195-1605Fax: +86-21-6191-8697Web: www.yiguannetwork.comP Please consider the environment before printing this email

I responded to the latest email from these guys posted above stating that the domain in question was our brand name. This is the response I got back:

"Dear Sirs,We are Hantong company based in China. We will register the "foremosthunting" as internet keyword and CN domain names .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn, .org.cn. We have handed in our application and are waiting for Mr. Paul Pang's approval. We think this name is important for our products in Chinese market. Even though Mr. Paul Pang advises us to change another name, we will persist in this name.Best regardsGareth Lee"

I responded again saying I wanted to protect my brand and this is the response I got back:

Dear Jon Ballard,

Based on your company having no relationship with them, we have suggested they should choose another name to avoid this conflict but they insist on this name as CN domain names (.cn/.com.cn/.net.cn/.org.cn) and internet keyword on the internet. In our opinion, maybe they do the similar business as your company and register it to promote his company.
According to the domain name registration principle: Domain name and internet keyword which applied based on the international principle are opened to companies as well as individuals. Any companies or individuals have rights to register any domain name and internet keyword which are unregistered. Because your company haven't registered this name as CN domains and internet keyword on the internet, anyone can obtain them by registration. However, in order to avoid this conflict, the trademark or original name owner has priority to make this registration in our audit period.
If your company is the original owner of this name and want to register these CN domain names (.cn/.com.cn/.net.cn/.org.cn) and internet keyword to prevent anybody from using them, please inform us. We can send you an application form with price list and help your company register them.

Kind regards

As you can see the end game here is to get me to buy some over priced Chinese domain name extensions. The next correspondence I received from this company was a invoice. The invoice contained:

$144/Year from a "Internet Key Word" (My Brand Name)
4 different Chinese domain name extension versions of my URL at $44/Year.

The invoice said it was the "Internet Keyword & CN Domain Name Application Form"

Attached please find this application form. You can find the price from this form. If your company want to make this application, please fill out this form and send it back with the copy of company business license (company registration certificate).

I also asked what a internet keyword was (Only $144/Year) and this is the response I received:

Thanks for your email. Internet Keyword is one of the new accessing ways to internet, which is the real-world brand’s extension and incorporeal property in the network. It is also a new generation of network accessing technology, which can help users get the companies and products’ information directly by inputting the name of company, product, trademark etc. into browser, search engines, regional infoports and so on.
Kind regards
Paul Pang

What's in a font?

2010-06-11T11:03:00.003-06:00

Typography. It's such a beautiful art. Simple adjustments can drastically improve not only how we read text, but how we feel when reading text. Conveying emotions through text via the web has some serious limits. Only a small subset of fonts are going to work cross-platform. Here's the basics.

Arial / Helvetica
Courier New
Times New Roman

Of course it is possible to use other fonts, but those are the basics that are "guaranteed" to work.

Luckily, Google has done it once again. Using Google's font directory we can finally use a wider variety of fonts on the web. This is an awesome service that provides the web with open and royalty free fonts. Not only are these fonts free to use, but Google hosts this service for you. Embedding fonts is as simple as adding a few lines to your web page. Just check out this tutorial on Google's website.

We here at Foremost Media are really excited about this. We are always on the look out for cool new technologies to make your websites look and work great.

Google announces new features

2010-05-14T07:26:00.000-06:00

"We introduced a new way to view search results for sites with lots of images. Each result will now include a strip of images from the website, so you can get a better preview of what each page has to offer. [...]

This week, we released a new version of Goggles with translation capabilities built in. To use it, point your phone's camera at a foreign word or phrase and use the 'region of interest button' to draw a box around specific words."

It's official: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor

2010-04-16T12:36:00.002-06:00

Last Friday, Google announced that they started to use site speed as one of the 200 signals that influence the position of a website in the search results.

"As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. [...]
We've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites."

Will your website rankings drop?

Google's Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only some websites:
"Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.
So please don?t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that 'We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.'
The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change."
While 1% does not sound much, it can be a problem if your website belongs to the pages whose rankings will drop.

At this time, Google's new site speed signal only applies to visitors searching in English on Google.com.

What does this mean for Foremost Media Customers? Not a whole lot, but if your using a ultra low cost web host, or your site has lots of Java script calls or gZip is not enabled along with a multitude of other best practices you may want to pay attention to this announcement. If you need help making your website preform better give us a call today!

The State Of The Internet- Video

2010-03-10T11:21:00.001-06:00

Some pretty interesting facts about the internet:

Increase Website Load Speed With Neat Little Trick

2010-03-05T11:34:00.000-06:00

I was looking into this a while back and it just popped back up in my mind again. To reduce bandwidth and page load times some websites will place a majority of their images in a single image and use it as if it were a tile sheet.

Example: http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo8.png

Using some a certain combination of CSS properties you can crop out unneeded parts of the image.

Example:

.next-button {

cursor: pointer;

background-image: url(tilesheet.png);

background-position: 32px 0px;

width: 16px;

height: 16px;

}

Pretty cool stuff no doubt. It obviously not worth it for smaller sites considering the amount of work it would take to get it setup. But it's always an option for bulky high traffic sites. Keep in mind this is just one out of a thousand techniques Google uses to give you those quick loading pages.

-Posted By Foremost Media Staff Member Kevin W.

Easy Image Resizing with the Web Resizer

2010-03-04T08:51:00.008-06:00

As a web developer, I regularly open a website to see the images on the page slowly load line by line. I immediately know what has happened and think about the day that I will write a blog post about how to resize images for the web. Well, today is the day that I write the post.

The Problem: Large Images

Uploading images from a digital camera will put unnecessarily large images on your site. Today's digital cameras generally produce images that are well over 2000 pixels wide and over 2 megabytes in size. When these images are uploaded at full size to a web page and then displayed at 300 pixels wide, the web browser will scale the picture down to the width, but it is still loading the entire full-sized file. Place two or three of these huge image files on a web page and the page load time will increase drastically.

The Solution: Resized and Web Optimized Images

When placing photos on your web page, you should resize your photos to fit the space that you want them to take up on the page. A web page with optimized and resized images will load much more quickly and the smaller image files will still look as good as their larger siblings.

How does one resize/optimize images for the web?

While Photoshop is a great tool for completing this task, it is expensive and there is a learning curve involved in becoming proficient at it. Thankfully, there are plenty of free and easy to use options available for resizing and optimizing images. Of all that I have seen and used, none has impressed me as much as the online web resizer found at http://webresizer.com/resizer. This is an awesome tool that is extremely easy to use. The site allows you to resize and crop your images and they also provide some basic editing functions to help you get your images looking good quickly. One of my favorite features is the ability to quickly add rounded corners to an image.

This is not an efficient tool for processing a large number of images, but if you only need to resize a few photos for a page you are developing, this is a great option. Another plus is that you do not need to install anything to make it work. Everything is done inside of your web browser.

Take a few minutes to check out the Web Resizer and bookmark it for the next time you need to add images to your site.

Switching to our email hosting has never been easier

2010-02-25T09:01:00.002-06:00

If you are thinking about moving your hosting to us and one of your concerns is losing emails in the process, have no fear. We now have the ability to easily transfer your email accounts to our hosting environment from many popular email providers. We can help migrate your email from Exchange 2007, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail Plus, IMAIL and others.

Contact your current system administrator if you are unsure which mail server type you are using.

Learn more about our hosting options here:
http://tinyurl.com/fm-hosting-info

Google Bot Feeds On Bread Crumbs

2010-02-04T09:31:00.000-06:00

Google has recently started to return bread crumbs as clicable results on some of their search results pages (SERPS). The program is still new and according to Googles Matt Cutts and what you are seeing now may change down the road. The neat thing for webmasters is that it provides more links to your site from the SERPS page on Google. At this point all that is needed to get Google to display bread crumbs with your search results is you need bread crumbs on your site with a consistent deliminator between them and the bread crumbs should reflect your sites hierarchy.

Remember bread crumbs aren't a magic bullet for SEO but it is my belief that every website should have them regardless of there effect on your search results. Breadcrumbs help improve the user experience on your site especially if your site is pretty deep.

Here is what Matt had to say about the topic:

Writing A Good Title Tag For SEO

2010-01-29T07:41:00.001-06:00

Writing Good Title Tags For Search Engine Optimization

It amazes me how many companies are not taking full advantage of their title tags or not formatting their title tags properly. If your page is all about branding your company name then put the company name at the front of the title tag, but if your page is trying to capture traffic for a specific phrase like "Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk" you want the key phrase at the front of your title tag.

Missed Opportunity: XYZ Company- Leader in Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk

Properly Formatted: Thermal Dynamic Techno Funk Information XYZ Company

Title Tags are one of the most important elements on your page so use it well. For the most part, your company is going to show up well on the search engines because it's all over your site.

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Can you guranatee to get us on the first page of google?

2010-01-22T09:02:00.000-06:00

Here is what Google Says About Ranking Guarantees: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings."

- Google's SEO Tips

At Foremost Media we have a great track record of providing top rankings for our clients and we can guarantee that your project will be completed in a ethical and honest manor and with the same attention to detail that we have used in the past to deliver excellent results to our other SEO clients. Our results with our past and current clients are our guarantee that we have had great success with search engine optimization.
I am confident that we can help your company generate more leads through the search engines. Remember that the search engine optimization projects are a collaboration between our companies. We will defiantly need input from you and your team as we move forward. The more involved in the process your group is the better the results. Our job is to help you tailor your content to both the search engines and the surfer to help you not only be found but also generate more leads for your business.

Microsoft Warns that Internet Explorer 6 is Flawed...

2010-01-22T08:46:00.001-06:00

This week Microsoft has admitted that its Internet Explorer 6 browser that is running on Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers has flawed code that contributes to a security hole in the software that was recently used in attacks on Google in China.

Microsoft is now urging users who have not yet upgraded from IE6 to consider upgrading to a new version of Internet Explorer. Upgrades from Internet Explorer 6 have been freely available from Microsoft for several years, but Microsoft has refused to force users to upgrade.

Do you think that these security holes will be motivation enough to cause users who have not upgraded in the last 3-4 years to take the leap now?

Do you catch my drip?

2010-01-22T08:24:00.000-06:00

Drip Email Marketing Campaigns Can Help Sell Complex Products and Reduce Sales Cycle-
Many products epically in the B2C realm take some time to explain and buyers often need to be educated on the product. Enter stage left- Drip Marketing! The idea behind drip marketing is to take a cold lead or a researcher and educate that lead about the product in an attempt to turn them into customers. One way to do this is to have a series of automated emails sent a few days or weeks apart, which explain more about the product. Each email sent can build on the last email and highlight a new feature as an example.
Using drip emails like this help build trust with the prospect, and give the seller the opportunity to position themselves as an authority in the industry or topic under consideration.

Contact us today to learn more about using our email marketing software to set up drip marketing emails!

Mr. Ballard Google Is On The Phone

2009-09-22T12:27:00.004-06:00

My phone rang a few minutes ago and our receptionist buzzed into my office saying "Chris from Google" is on the line and would like to speak to you.

My first thought "WOW- Google wants to talk to little old me?"

I quickly picked up the phone and a low energy voice at the other end of the line and answered my greeting with a "Hello, this is Chris from Google"

My first question- "How can I help you Chris"

Chris- "I'm On Your Website"... Wow a real Google employee on my website... "and I see your not ranking very well" (Wow, Google is really getting involved with their customers)

Me- "Which website are you on Chris?" (Since we are a web development company we manage hundreds of sites)

Chris- "www.gamebirdhunts.com"

Me- "What search term are you looking at Chris?" (Gamebirdhunts.com is a pheasant hunting site with thousands of unique visitors per day) -

Chris (He seemed a little shocked by this question- Who is little old me to talk to a Google God Like this?) "Well... Montana Deer Hunting, Your 4 pages back and we can guarantee you the first page for that listing"

Me- (This is when I knew that Chris was not everything he seemed to be) Are you sure you work for Google Chris?"

Chris- "No, I work with Google" (That's not the story he used to get through my gate keeper and not what he told me when he first got me on the phone)

Me- "So Chris, What are you offering me, some sort of pay per click service?"

Chris- "No, it's not pay per click you get a monthly bill for the top search position on Google"

Me- "So you want to charge me more then I would pay doing pay per click directly with Google in return for setting up Pay Per click for me?"

Chris- Click

Me - "Hello, Hello Chris"

The moral of this story is if Chris From "Google" calls you beat him to the hang up. There are a lot of companies running scams on unsuspecting sites out there. Phone answerer be ware! I wish I would have caught Chris's companies real name.

Claiming my blog at Technorati

2009-07-20T07:34:00.001-06:00

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Foremost Media On Linked In

2009-05-05T10:33:00.003-06:00

Did you know you can set up a company profile on LinkedIn and it shows up with a link to your website available to the public and search engines?

Here is our LinkedIn Public Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/foremost-media-inc

Domain Name Register Request

2009-03-19T08:29:00.002-06:00

About once a month I get an email from a client who received a message similar to the message below:

Dear Manager,

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company. On 2009-03-19, we received an application formally; one person named “Jacques Tits” wanted to apply for the Internet brand “yourdomainnamehere” and some domain names through our body. During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned "Jacques Tits" to register these domain names through us or not? Or is "Jacques Tits" your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.
In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn't resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorize the application of “Jacques Tits".

Thank you for your cooperate.

Best Regards,

Leo Chan
Registration Commissioner
Sponsoring Registrar:World Wide Network
Tel: +852 3115 2295
Fax: +852 3072 3223
Email:leo@worldwidedomain.asia

Let me tell you it's crap... These guys are trying to scare you into purchasing a domain with a .cn extension or some other extension to "protect your brand" The domain will cost you a bunch and most of the time is not necessary. This is a scam. DELETE!

Link Exchange Requests

2009-03-05T07:33:00.002-06:00

About once per day I get a "automated" type of link exchange request asking me to exchange links on one of our clients sites. They Usually look something like this:

Hello,

We are an online based company, we run a network of blogs, and wondering if you would like to trade links with us?

we would give your site a prominent listing on our pages at:

http://www.sunglassesfashion.com/links.php

If you would be willing to exchange links we us, please use the following:

------------------------------------------------
Title: Designer sunglasses
URL: sunglassesfashion.com
Description: Authentic designer sunglasses for mens & womens including Bvlgari, Chanel, Christian Dior and much more.
------------------------------------------------

Please let us know where you added our links so we'll add yours on our pages as well.

Thank you

Joana

PLEASE NOTE:

This email is not spam, it was manually sent by us, our sole purpose being to introduce ourselves to you with no obligation on your part.

Your email address was found to be publicly available on your website and it has not been added to any list. We consider this to be a polite way to contact you and apologise sincerely if you have been inconvenienced in any way.

We are legally obliged to offer you an 'OPT-OUT' from future mailings from us; should you wish to exercise this right, please reply with "OPT-OUT" in the subject field.

Not a bad letter overall but totally unsolicited. The problem is I don't have any websites related to glasses, sunglasses etc.

If your considering link building don't waste your time just blasting out links to anyone and everyone. Make a targeted effort to find sites that compliment yours. If your site is about web development target a hosting company or some other type of business services company. The search engines not only look at incoming links but also were those links are from.

One great way to build incoming links is to write articles about a topic that relates to your business. Include a link to your business or service in the article as a plain text link. Don't sell in these articles inform. Everyone wins with this approach. You get a great link from some relevent content back to your site and the site publisher gets some good content for their site.

Until next time!

JB

Foremost Video Launches New Online Video Site

2008-09-23T14:09:00.006-06:00

Foremost Media recently completed a online video learning site for taxidermists. The site features video playback and compression software as well as permission based viewing rights.

The site allows visitors to sign up pay a subscription fee and receive instant access to members only videos that teach the viewer taxidermy. In addition the user can upload their own videos to share with other site members.

Check it out at http://www.taxidermytube.com/ If you would like to build your own video sharing site contact us today!

Screen Resolutions and Website Design

2007-08-01T09:37:00.000-06:00

On many of the self-updateable sites we build I often receive the following question:

The site isn't "wide"...it's not taking up my whole screen. Will it be wider? (Referring to our 800 x 600 resolution design layout)

Here is where we currently stand on the issue of website width.

When last I checked, statistically, 30% of the screens out there are still the old 800x600 format. (This is changing fast) We can go to the next size up but that means that 30% of your audience will have to scroll left to right. We do not recommend this at this time.

The second option would be to create a site that fills the entire screen. Since most of our sites have the capability to be updated by the customer an expandable site can create some issues with text formatting. In other words, the page may look full on some screen resolutions but on others my have large empty spaces or weird spacing.

The choice is ultimately the customers but at this point we recommend building to the lowest common denominator.

MSN.com is still designed at 800 x 600:

Lumpy EmailWant to get your email marketing message opened? Make it lumpy!

2007-07-30T20:48:00.000-06:00

A few years ago I was at a marketing meeting and had the privilege of listening to a promotional marketing guru discuss how to get your direct mail piece opened. The basic point of his whole presentation was that if your mailing piece looks like junk mail people will just throw it away. His number one suggestion was to put something in the envelope that makes it "lumpy". A pen or something like that stuffed in your direct piece has been proven to get your direct mail piece opened. When I think about this in my own office we throw away allot of mail but i always open the mail that feels like it has something in it. Since you can't put lumps in your actual email how do you make your email lumpy?

1. The From Address

Always send your email marketing message from a personal email address- If your email marketing piece comes from an address like sales@yourcompanyname.com it looks like junk. When sent from yourname@yourcomapnyname.com it has much better odds of getting opened.

2. Subject Line Basics-

Keep It Short - Short and to the point subject lines have been proven to have better open rates then long subject lines and most email clients wont display subject lines longer than 50 characters.

Write a Very Specific Subject Line - Let them know exactly what the email is about. Don't waste valuable real estate on vague subject lines

Make It Personal - Talk directly to the recipient. "You can save money on your next toner purchase"

Write Like A Real Person - Avoid subject lines with all caps, exclamation points, and words like "free" and "sale.

For more information on email marketing services from Foremost Media please visit our email marketing services page

Get Listed in 48 hours Guaranteed

2007-07-10T07:09:00.000-06:00

So today I got another one of those spam emails from a company called wpromote (email address seo@seo-news.com). It was a nice looking email and they are claiming that they can get my site listed on Google, Yahoo, AOL and Ask Jeeves in 48 hours all for the bargain price of only $99.95.

Not only that but they will re-submit every 30 days there after, then I get a detailed report on which search engines they submitted my site to. WOW! All that for only $99?????

So What's The Catch? First of all, if you read the fine print they are using PPC marketing to get your site listed on the search engines. Anyone can do this. Just go to the search engine you want to run PPC adds on and set up your account for free. Save your $99 for running add words and you will be much further ahead.

Next- "resubmit every 30 days" What a waste of time. Every quality SEO professional will tell you that it is not necessary to resubmit your site to the search engines on a regular basis. Think about it, search engines like Google and yahoo have a huge interest in serving up the freshest content and best results for their surfers. How long would you continue to use Google if every time you did a search the results it served up linked to pages that have been removed or updated and the content didn't match the search results any longer.

The top search engines will revisit your site on their own on a regular basis once your site has been indexed. Don't waste your time or money having a company resubmit your site every 30 days.

The last point I wanted to bring up is the Testimonials on this email marketing piece. Like this one "I just wanted to tell you how happy I am with the service." Bradley, Utopian Universe" Let's do a Google search for Utopian Universe and see what comes up- I don't see anything even closely related to Utopian Universe pop up.

So right now you are thinking does Jon think pay per click is bad? and Do I need to resubmit my site every 30 days? The answer is no and no. Pay per click is a great form of advertising. I guess what I would say in response to this company's ad is, "What are they doing for me for the $99." Pay Per Click accounts are free to set up and can be running in less then 48 hours. Point 2, why pay to resubmit my site every 30 days when the search engines do that automatically. I guess the whole offer just seems a bit shady to me. I'll take your $99 if you are just going to throw it away any way. I could even give you an hour of search engine marketing consulting for that $99.

By the way, Here is the ad:

Until next time!

Why Janesville Wisconsin

2007-07-05T20:35:00.000-06:00

People ask me all the time, why is your website design company based in Janesville Wisconsin?

Great question. Janesville is not known as a hot bed of internet technology but we aim to change that. So why is Foremost Media located in Janesville, WI?

Reason #1- Janesville is close to everywhere!
Janesville is close to Madison, Wisconsin as well as Rockford, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In fact, most of these larger WI and IL hot spots are within a 1 hour drive of downtown Janesville.

Reason #2 - Low Cost Of Living
Janesville has a relatively low cost of living when compared to other major cities in the area and that allows us to attract great Web design talent at a much more reasonable rate. In other words, a website designer in Janesville makes about 25% less then a web designer in Chicago and we pass that savings on to you. Wages are just the beginning. Office space is much cheaper in Janesville than downtown Chicago and not all Web designers and programmers want to live in the big city. Are you seeing a theme here?

Reason #3 - UW Whitewater has a great MCS Program
UW Whitewater (about a 15 minute drive from our offices in Janesville) has one of the best Management Computer Systems programs in the country. Out of our 6 full time web designers 3 of them are UW Whitewater MCS program Alums. Whitewater also has a great graphic design program as well.

Reason #4- Janesville is a great place to raise a family
Janesville offers great schools, and a safe and friendly place to raise a family. A real plus for young talented website designers to raise a family.

So do you only build websites for businesses in Janesville?
No, although many of the top Janesville businesses trust us with their online marketing, we work for businesses all over the country, from small family businesses to a fortune 200 company, Foremost Media can design a website for your business that will accomplish your online goals and fit within your budget.

Give us a call today- 608-758-4841

Or if you are in Janesville Stop in:

1339 Excalibur Dr. Janesville, WI 53546

Blogging for business- Facts and Tips

2007-06-06T20:32:00.000-06:00

I was doing a bit of reading tonight and came across a few interesting stats I though I would share on blogs for business.

Shop.org and Forrester Research Inc's report 2006 The State of Retailing Online Shows-

In 2005 6% of respondents offered either blogs or community forums

In 2004 9% of respondents offered blogs or community forums (Hmmm? Why are less people using blogs to promote their business???)

In this same article they had some "blogging basics" do's and dont's for a guy who is interestingly enough right in my back yard of Madison Wisconsin.

Anyway, his first do was "Plan on 10 to 15 hours a week for blogging activity...".
Holly cow, 10 to 15 hours a week????

First Tip under Don'ts- "Don't try to fool readers by using a ghostwriter pretending to be someone from the company..."

So let me get this straight, I can't get someone else to write for me and I need to spend almost 15% of my time at work working on my blog????

Improve Your Website Position!

2007-06-04T07:49:00.000-06:00

Every week I get at least 100 emails just like this:

Dear info
Your site is strong enough for top placement on Google! and Yahoo! With your permission, we would like to show you how we can make a difference in your online business. There is no charge for the site review and results are backed by a 100% guarantee. Email us at tammy@speedy.com.pe today and we will give you a free web site review. See how you can change the landscape of your online business. Include the site(s) you want us to look at and how you would like us to contact you.
Sincerely,
Client Care
Rocket Media

My Reply:

Tammy,
I am looking to get better rankings on my site. What do you recommend?
Jon Ballard

For my next few blog posts I am going to be contacting these unsolicited people that care so much about my site and see what they are recommending. Stay tuned!

I will analyses their responses and see if they are offering good advice or just trying to get a dollar from me. In addition I will be keeping them busy so hopefully they will stop sending you those annoying non solicited email AKA Spam! By the way, if you need good spam filtration services check out our New Spam Filtration Product.

Until Next Time!!!

Jon Ballard

Foremost Media Web Design

Janesville, WI
608-758-4841

A article in favor of blogging for business from google

2007-05-30T16:11:00.000-06:00

Here is a great article from google on blogging for business:

http://www.google.com/adwords/newsletters/q207/techbtob/page4.html

Why should you blog? It's an easy and informal way to keep people abreast of company activities and perspectives. While website optimization should remain a core part of your communication strategy, blogs can help you get the word out as quickly as possible. If you think you're ready to jump on the blog wagon, check out Blogger,
Google's free blogging tool. It features drag-and-drop template editing, activity reports, and privacy controls – and it only takes minutes to get started.
Here are a few best practices for all the newly minted bloggers out there:
Educate current and potential customers about your business – how you got started, what your philosophy is, who your employees are.
Post breaking news about your products or services when it's hot off the press.
Make the experience more engaging and interactive with photos, videos, and RSS feeds.
Feature links to other blogs about your industry – they may even return the favor.
Include a link to your blog on your website (and vice versa) so visitors can
access the full range of available information.
Use Google Analytics to keep track of how visitors are finding your blog and where they're coming from.
Stick to a regular update schedule.

I think these are all great ideas. I guess the point of my previous post (http://foremostmedia.blogspot.com/2007/05/to-blog-or-not-to-blog-is-blogging-for.html) was do this after you have done all of this on your site. Most of the marketing managers and business managers we deal with barley have time to update their own sites.

How safe is your domain name?

2007-05-23T22:02:00.001-06:00

About once a month we seem to be helping clients sort out issues they have with their domain name registration. Typically their domain name was registered with their previous webmaster and the webmaster set themselves up as the administrator.

Many of the webmasters that from the old days are no longer in business and so the clients domain expires or they need to edit DNS and they can't because technically they don't own the domain.

I guess the point of this whole post is:

If you pay someone to register a domain on your behalf, make sure that they make you the Primary Registrant and the Admin Registrant.

If you don't, you may have to pay a guy like me to help you sort it all out.

Don't wait until your domain expires or you need to make a update to your DNS info. find out who the owner of your domain is today.

You can look up the records of the domain by doing a WhoIs look up.

Here are a few links:

http://www.whois.net/
http://www.dnsstuff.com

You wouldn't purchase a building and put the deed in the contractors name. Don't build a online business that you don't own.

Adding PDF Documents to your site (File naming structure)

2007-05-11T16:47:00.000-06:00

I get this question alot:

I need to load some .pdf files onto the website and currently the files can only be one word and no special characters.
Example: TB030107ADaylightSavingsUpdate(2)[1].pdf

Is it possible to see if the website creators can allow us to use spaces in the file name?
Example: TB030107A – Daylight Savings Update.pdf

I think this would really clean up the look of our file download capability. Please let me know your thoughts.

Here is a great response:

Because there are many variables including different browsers, operating systems, query strings and documents being stored in databases, standard practice is to leave out special characters and spaces from actual file names.

In summary, if you wanted to try uploading files with spaces, we obviously can’t say no. Just keep in mind that erratic behavior in communication between all the different computers, browsers and databases is a possible outcome.

Also, keep in mind that you can change the Titles/descriptions that appear on the front end of the website however you see fit.

To blog or not to blog- Is blogging for a business a waste of time?

2007-05-01T14:22:00.000-06:00

I bet 2 or 3 times a month I get a question like this posed to me-

"I would like to start a blog site on my website. Another company told me they are having a lot of success. Is this something that you can help me with? What are your thoughts about such a thing in B to B??!"

"I just went to a seminar and one of the mini sessions was on blogging. They told me every business should have a blog. How do I put one on my website?"

I am sure I will get a bunch of greif for this but here is my take on blogging (Keep in mind most of the websites we build have a complete CMS (Content Managment System) in place that allows the site owner to make changes quickly and easily in a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get).

Personally I think it is a waste of time for most businesses.

NOW BEFORE YOU BLOGGERS GET YOUR PANTIES IN A BUNCH AND LEAVE ME A BUCH OF HATE MAIL CONSIDER THIS-

If it were my site I would just assume spend the time updating the content and performing SEO on my current site then trying to maintain a blog. Most companies don't update their website very often and that is the where I would start. Most of what you put on a blog can be put on your website. If you have all that in place and still have time to blog then blog away. It can't hurt.

This is just my take on it but the primary benefit of a blog is the ease of use. In other words it is easy for non technical people to add content quickly. When you have the skills to add content or you have a site that is easy to maintain, I believe you are better off adding it on the site itself.

I may be wrong and I am sure that some businesses have acheived great results but if you were to compare the time spent improving your site and adding content to the time spent blogging I would propose that the time spent improving your site would offer the best return on investment.

The exception to that rule is if you have a product or service that warrants discussion. Blogs have the ability for people to leave comments (which can be good or bad) but it does add some layer of customer interaction.

(I get this question allot. Perhaps I should post it on my blog or maybe just in my FAQ's on my website)

(Just my 2 Cents)